NIETZSCHE AND JEWISH CULTURE, Edited by Jacob Golomb (Routledge,
London and New York 1997).

This book is a collection of essays by Jewish authors (each chapter
by a different author); footnotes are included at the end of chapters
2 and 3; Greek words are rendered in Latin script. Peter Myers, May
3, 2001; update September 22, 2002; my comments are shown {thus}.

The rehabilitation of Nietzsche, his sanitation as safe for Zionists
and Aryanists of the Imperial kind, made him a rival to Marx, influencing
the outcome of the Cold War.

In spite of the numerous pro-Semitic passages prevalent throughout the
corpus of Nietzsche's works, due to Nazi distortions decades later, perhaps
no passage reverberates in contemporary minds more than his notorious
attribution of the slave revolt in morality to priestly Judea recorded
in section 7 of the first essays in the Genealogy of Morals. Here, in tones
bordering on a tantrum Nietzsche ascribes the slave revolt as stemming
from the root of [priestly] Jewish hatred, "the sublimest kind
of hatred."51 Although this one segment has traditionally evoked hasty
charges that Nietzsche himself was an anti-Semite, it is seldom noted that
Nietzsche is not attacking contemporary Jewry but priestly Judea, which
he believes gave rise to (anti-Semitic) Christianity. Nor is frequently
noted that elsewhere throughout the Genealogy's three essays Nietzsche
- in no less tyrannical tones - reiterates that the psychological disposition
of ressentiment lurks within the "antisemites where it has always
bloomed";52 that he contrasts the superior Old Testament with
the New;53 and that his overall wrath is unleashed upon the entire
history of Christianity, especially its visions of hell and the psychic
pleasures, the "cellar rodents of vengefulness and hatred" derived
from imaging pagans perishing in the wrath of God's fire at the Final
Judgement.54 Throughout the Genealogy, Nietzsche rants against "the
antisemites who today roll their eyes in a Christian-Aryan bourgeois manner,"
and at the conclusion of the work, explodes mercilessly against the whole
of modern Germany, including Duhring, Renan and the contemporary Lutheran
state-church. He crucifies the "worms of vengefulness and rancor"
that swarm on the soil of modern Europe, describing anti-Semites as "moral
masturbators," "hangmen" and as those who represent the
"will to power of the weakest": "They are all men of ressentiment,
physiologlcally unfortunate and worm-eaten ... inexhaustible and insatiable
in outbursts against the fortunate and happy."55 Thus, more in-depth
evaluations of the Genealogy - aside from isolated readings of the (priestly)
Jewish slave revolt as briefly recorded in the first essay - are necessary
for discerning whether Nietzsche himself was

{p. 32} of sound mind, and also for grasping why the most vicious antiSemites
of his time were offended by, and in fact retaliated against, Nietzsche's
treatise.56

... the structure of the Genealogy is a treatise on the "genealogy
of morals" in a somewhat literal sense. The first essay, from the
original Aryan race to Napoleon, places the slave revolt and the Judeo-Christian
tradition at the center. The second goes from the origin of bad conscience
and its expression in the state to the atonement (Christianity) and ends
with the announcement that the Antichrist and anti-nihilst must triumph
over God and nothingness. And the third begins with a discussion of Nietzsche's
former heroes Wagner and Schopenhauer, and ends with the claim that Christian
morality and the ascetic ideal must be overcome: "And, to repeat
in conclusion what I said at the beginning; man would rather will nothingness
than not will."57

In the infamous section 7, in contrast to the Greek barbaric nobles,
Nietzsche attributes the slave revolt in morality to the priestly caste
of Judea that reaches its fruition with Christianity: "That with
the Jews there begins the slave revolt in morality: that revolt which has
a history of two thousand years behind it and which we no longer see because
it - has been victorious."58 The moral revolt which "has two
thousand years behind it" is an allusion to the Christian religion;
the "victorious" morality of modern-day Germany that Nietzsche
abhors is the priestly morality of Judea that is continued in Christianity.
The point here is simply that Nietzsche is describing Christianity's inheritance
of priestly Judea, as distinct from original Israel. And he expounds this
point in section 9.

After describing the slave revolt (section 7) and stating that the Judeo-Christian
morality of modern Germany has triumphed over the masters, "everything
is becoming Judaized, Christianized, and mob-ized (what do the words matter!)"
(section 9), Nietzsche does not use the term "Israel" or "Jews"
again in the essay unless he is referring specifically to Christians. There
is one exception to this (section 16), which I will address shortly. The
language in the first essay borders on wrath, particularly when he uses
the word Jew: "everywhere that man has become tame or desires to become
tame: three Jews, as is known, and one Jewess (Jesus of Nazareth, the

{p. 33} fisherman Peter, the rug weaver Paul ... Mary)."59 However,
he adopts the rhetoric not to fuel secular or Christian anti-Semites, who
were his enemies. He is attempting to annoy Christians who denied their
Jewishness, as well as create conflict between anarchists and Christians
over the sole ingredient which separated them: Christianity's relationship
to Judaism. By attacking priestly Judea, Nietzsche is denigrating that
strand of Judaism that Christian anti-Semites claimed as their ancestor,
which allegedly professed the coming Messiah - as represented by Jesus
Christ. This serves to explain the logistics of why Nietzsche derided
priestly Judea, all the while upholding contemporary Jewry and original
Israel. Conversely, it also illuminates why prominent (Christian and
anti-Christian) Aryan racial supremacists, such as Renan, Duhring and Forster,
retaliated against Nietzsche's Genealogy.

Historically, the myth of the Germanic-Aryan race was formed and promoted
by racial theorists such as Gobineau, Wagner and Renan well before the
Genealogy appeared. In the Genealogy, Nietzsche was entering the political
dialogue of his time, presenting an alternative version of the Aryan master
race; a version that would have inflamed anti-Jewish racists. In the texts,
Nietzsche severs the Germanic bloodline from Aryan humanity ("between
the old Germanic tribes and us Germans there exists hardly a conceptual
relationship, let alone one of blood"),60 proclaims mixed races
instead (the blond beast is at the bottom of all "noble races,"
including "the Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, the Homeric
heroes, and the Scandinavian Vikings")6l and exalts the Jews over
the Germans ("one only has to compare similarly gifted nations
- the Chinese or the Germans, for instance - with the Jews, to sense which
is of the first and which of the fifth rank").62 Although decades
later the Nazis uplifted terms like the "blond beast" to create
the illusion that Nietzsche supported Aryan racial supremacy, Nietzsche
was, in fact, opposing the actual precursors of the Third Reich, of which
Nazi leaders were well aware. Initially, Nietzsche used the term "blond
beast" when referring to the state and the Christian church of the
Middle Ages.63

The Antichrist

Nietzsche's war against the proto-Nazis continues in the Antichrist,
wherein he opposes the Christian theologian Ernst Renan, whose anti-Semitic
biography, The Life of Jesus,was a bestseller throughout

{p. 34} Europe. Renan demeaned original Israel and contemporary Jewry,
locating the spiritual development of Christianity with the priestly-prophetic
strand of Judaism, especially the prophet Isaiah. Thus, again, although
surface readings of the Antichrist could suggest that Nietzsche demeans
priestly-prophetic Judaism for no apparent reason, placing his stance in
dialogue with that of his anti-Semitic opponent Renan reveals that Nietzsche's
prime motive was not a capricious assault on Judaism (or the Jews), but
was geared to reverse Renan's anti-Semitic Christian theology.

For instance, in Chapter 10, "The Preachings on the Lake,"
Renan writes that Jesus's preaching, in his early ministry, "was gentle
and pleasing, breathing Nature and the perfume of the fields."64 After
meeting with opposition from his "enemies," Jesus eventually
comes to regard himself as the violent judge who would return to condemn
the world and judge his opponents.65 By Chapter 20, Jesus is beset even
more with bitterness, resentment and reproachfulness toward those who would
not believe in him. Renan writes:

{quote} He was no longer the mild teacher who delivered the "Sermon
on the Mount," who had met with neither resistance nor difficulty....
And yet many of the recommendations which he addressed to his disciples
contain the germs of a true fanaticism.... Must we reproach him for this?
No revolution is effected without some harshness .... The invincible obstacle
to the ideas of Jesus came especially from orthodox Judaism, represented
by the Pharisees. Jesus became more and more alienated from the ancient
Law.66 {endquote}

In regards to this evolvement, Nietzsche jests: "[T]here is a gaping
contradlction between the sermonizer on the mount, lake and meadow ...
and that fanatic of aggression, that mortal enemy of theologians and priests
whom Renan's malice has glorified as le grand mattre en ironie."67

Renan writes that Jesus increasingly "came to think of himself"
as "the destroyer of Judaism"; he "completely lost his Jewish
faith," and "far from continuing Judaism, Jesus represents the
rupture with the Jewish spirit": "The general march of Christianity
has been to remove itself more and more from Judaism. It will become perfect
in returning to Jesus, but certainly not in returning to Judaism."68
Renan concludes that the Old Jewish party, the Mosaic Law, was responsible
for Jesus's death; therefore, nineteenth-century Jews are responsible for
Christ's: "Consequently, every Jew who suffers today

{p. 35} for the murder of Jesus has the right to complain.... But nations,
like individuals have their responsibilities, and if ever crime was the
crime of a nation, it was the death of Jesus."69

Renan's book, released in 1864, was not only popular within the academy;
it sold like a "Waverly novel" among the populace from the first
hour of its publication. Five months after its release, eleven editions
(100,000 books) had been exhausted and it was already translated into German,
Italian and Dutch, rapidly to be followed by additional translations. In
1927, the book, which is now regarded as one of the two anti-Semitic bestsellers
throughout Europe in the nineteenth century, was still read more widely
than any other biography on Jesus.70

In the Genealogy, Nietzsche refers to Renan in connection with
Duhring and the Aryan myth; in the Nachlass (1884) he regards him
a weak-willed representative of "herd animal" democratic Europe;
and in Twilight, he names him as one among the family of Rousseau and
derogatorily calls him a democrat:71

{quote} With no little ambition, he wishes to represent an aristocracy
of the spirit: yet at the same time he is on his knees before its very
counter-doctrine, the evangile des humbles - and not only on his knees.
To what avail is all free-spiritedness ... if in one's guts one is still
a Christian, a Catholic - in fact, a priest! ... This spirit of Renan's
a spirit which is enervated, is one more calamity for poor, sick, will-sick
France.72 {endquote}

In the Antichrist, Nietzsche addresses Renan's notion of the
Last Judgement. He connects what he regards as the "propaganda"
of the early Christian community which "created its god according
to its needs and put words into its Master's mouth" to "those
wholly unevangelical concepts it now cannot do without: the return, the
'Last Judgment,' every kind of temporal expectation and promise."73
Nietzsche traces anti-Semitism from the early Christian community to
Rousseau to contemporaries such as Renan and Duhring, whom Nietzsche
regards as those needing to be reckoned with.74

Nietzsche not only opposes Renan's preference for the Christian God
to that of the powerful Yahweh, he opposes Renan's notion of Jesus as a
genius and a hero. When Renan regards Jesus as a genius, it is in reference
to Jesus's initial coming to self-consciousness that he would be a violent
judge ushering in the apocalyptic kingdom, which would consist of a "sudden
renovation of the world."75 According to Renan, Jesus applied to himself
the title "Son of Man"

{p. 36} and affirmed the "coming catastrophe" in which he
was to figure as judge, clothed with full powers which had been delegated
to him from the Ancient of Days. Renan writes: "Beset by an idea [the
Kingdom of God], gradually becoming more and more imperious (imperieux
) and exclusive, Jesus proceeds henceforth with a kind of fatal impassability
in the path marked out by his astonishing genius."76 In the Antichrist,
Nietzsche is responding to that passage:

{quote} To repeat, I am against any attempt to introduce the fanatic
into the Redeemer type; the word imperieux, which Renan uses, is alone
enough to annul the type. The "glad tidings" are precisely that
there are no longer any opposites; the kingdom of heaven belongs to the
children.... Such a faith is not angry, does not reproach, does not resist;
it does not bring "the sword".77 {endquote}

Renan located the origin of Christianity with the prophet Isaiah,
discarded original Israel and held nineteenth-century Jews, Israel's
remnants, responsible for the death of Jesus.78 Nietzsche's position is
the exact reverse. Although Nietzsche concurs with Renan that Christianity
originated with the prophet Isaiah, he disagrees that this represents
spiritual progress, but rather, the origin of Israel's demise which
has culminated in the (anti-Semitic) Christianity of ressentiment.79 The
slave morality of ressentiment, Nietzsche insists, began with the death
on the cross; it reached its most profound form of vengefulness when
the disciples totally misunderstood Jesus's message concerning the kingdom
of God, and instead opted for the apocalyptic Last Judgement.80 "What
are the glad tidings?" Nietzsche repeatedly asks. The glad tidings
Jesus brings are that the concepts of guilt, sin and punishment are
abolished. Sin, that which separates humans from God, is destroyed.
The kingdom of God is nothing that one expects; it has no yesterday
or today; it will not come in the future or in a thousand years: "The
kingdom of God is in you."81 Thus, although shallow readings of
Nietzsche's Antichrist have led to erroneous claims that Nietzsche was
"anti-Semitic" for "attacking" Judaism; it is crucial
to recognize that Nietzsche's position serves to refute the fundamental
position of anti-Semitic Christian theology. And it is also crucial to
realize that much confusion regarding Nietzsche's position stems not from
any lack of clarity or coherence of Nietzsche's part, but because Elisabeth
and the Nazis misquoted his words and used them against the Jews decades
later. That tactic created havoc and has successfully confused

{p. 37} interpreters to this very day. It has made sorting out Nietzsche's
views toward Judaism and the Jews extremely difficult, to the point where
the topic itself has become an emotionally sensitive issue; an issue that
has led many well-meaning persons to "blame" Nietzsche for his
fierce rhetoric, and thus for providing "anti-Semitic fuel" for
the Nazis, who allegedly "learned" from him. Moreover - perhaps
to the less well-intentioned - the tactic also serves to protect Elisabeth's
type of Christendom: whereas many writing after the Nazi era have been
quick to point out Nietzsche's negative critique of ancient Judea, works
addressing Nietzsche's critique of Christian anti-Semitism are virtually
non-existent.

{p. 50; footnotes for ch. 2} 51 GMI 8. 52 GMII 11. 53 GM III
22. 54 GM I 1 4ff. 55 GM III 14, III 26. 56 In 1887, Nietzsche's works
were attacked in the Antisemitische Correspondenz (an anti-Semitic newsletter),
depicted as "eccentric," "pathological" and "psychiatric."
Cf. letter to Paul Deussen, Nice, 3 January 1888, in Samtliche Briefe,
8 vols (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975-84), vol. 8 939, p. 220. The philosopher
welcomed the small, but growing number of negative reviews of his last
two works (Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals?, for the public
disapproval appeared to him a sign that he was becomlng somewhat of an
"influence" in Germany: "You can guess that [Dr Forster]
and I have to exert ourselves to the uttermost to avoid treating each other
openly as enemies.... The anti-Semitic pamphlets shower down wildly
upon me (which pleases me a hundred times more than their earlier restraint),"
letter to Franz Overbeck, Nice, 3 February 1888, in L 162, p. 282. 57 GM
III 28. 58 GMI 7. 59 GMI 16. 60 GMI 11. 61 GMI 11. 62 GM I 16, BGE 251.
63 The term "blond beast" occurs five times throughout Nietzsche's
writing (three times in the first section of the Genealogy, once in
the second section, and once in Twilight of the Idols). 64 Ernst Renan,
The Life of Jesus intro. John Haynes Holmes (New York: Random House, 1927),
p. 186. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 AC 31. Renan,Jesus, p. 295. 68 Renan, Jesus,
pp. 224, 235, and 39l. The last passage echoes Renan's remark in his Histoire
generale des langues Semitiques (Paris, 1878): "Once this mission
[monotheism] was accomplished, the Semitic race rapidly declined and left
it to the Aryan race alone to lead the march of human destiny,"
quoted in Leon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth, tr. kdmund Howard (Chatto: Sussex
University Press, l975), p. 207. 69 Renan, Jesus, p. 358. 70 As the author's
introduction to the English translation of the 1927 edition notes, Renan's
La Vie de Jesus sold like a Waverly novel among

{p. 70} the academy and the populace alike, highly esteemed for its
"beautiful style" which flourished throughout Renan's "brilliant"
retelling of Jesus's story. Renan, the introduction continues, was a "supreme
figure" among the scholars of his time, a simple, sincere, courageous
saint, "even if judged by the teachings of the Galilean lake."
To Holocaust scholars and historians of anti-Semitism, however Renan's
storytelling is neither beautiful not brilliant. Renan's Vie de Jesus,
together with Edouard Drumont's La France juive, the latter of which paved
the way for large-scale anti-Semitic propaganda in France, were the two
anti-Semitic bestsellers in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Cf. Leon Poliakov, A History of Anti-Semitism, vol. 4 (New York: Vanguard
Press, 1985), pp. 39-40; Poliakov, Aryan Myth, p. 208. Incredibly, that
which outraged Nietzsche (and these historians) about Renan is overlooked
- or disregarded - even today. In a l968 Englishspeaking biography on Renan,
Richard Chadbourne, Ernst Renan (New York: Twaine Publishers, 1968), p.
153, writes of Renan's "valiant" attempt to base an ethic largely
on Christian principles without believing in its supernatural teachings:
"A simple criterion guiding Renan is his testing of Christian works:
'How much they contain of Jesus.' He is far from the scandalous simplicity
of Nietzsche's 'the last Christian died on the cross.'" For further
discussion on Renan's racial views, see Shmuel Almog, "The racial
motif in Renan's attitude toward Judaism and the Jews," Zion 32 (l967):
175-200. 71 GM III 26: WP 128. Cf. Letter to Peter Gast, Nice, 24 November
l887, in SL, p. 206. 72 TW, "Skirmishes" 1. Renan was,
in fact, an ex-Catholic whom the Catholic Church denounced because of
his non-divinization of Jesus. He was suspended from his professorship
at the College de France in 1862, declined a position as an Assistant Director
of Department of Manuscripts in the Imperial Library in 1864, in order
to devote himself to his studies, but in 1871 was restored to his professorship.
In 1879 he became a member of the Academy. From 1884 onward he was administrator
of the College de France. Renan regarded himself as a Liberal Protestant,
but like Nietzsche, had no use for institutional religion or dogmatic
Christianity. Unlike Nietzsche, Renan nonetheless viewed Christianity as
an exemplary spiritual discipline, Katz, Prejudice to Destruction,
p. 133. 73 AC 31. 74 For a brief comparison of Renan and Duhring, see Katz,
Prejudice to Destruction, pp. 265ff. 75 Renan,Jesus, pp. 125, 160ff. 76
Renan, Jesus, p 160 (ch. 7). 77 AC 32. 78 See the Preface to vol. 7: Marcus-Aurelius
in Renan's multi-volume work, entitled Origins of Christianity, for a summary
of his position concerning Christianity's origins with Isaiah; his negativity
regarding original Israel prevails throughout his writings. Nietzsche
read Renan's Origins in the winter of 1887, "with much spite and -
little profit", Letter to Overbeck, Nice, 23 February 1887, in L 149,
p. 261. 79 AC 17, 25, 26.

In his "Notes to 'We philologists'", which he intended one
day to become the fourth "Untimely meditation", Nietzsche had
gathered material on educational reform, on the criticism of classical
philology and on German culture in general.2 In addition, there are a great
many notes concerning the emergence and construction of Greek culture -
a process also seen here by Nietzsche as the means and paradigm for any
education or culture. The Greeks are "the genius among the peoples"
(p. 169 = 5[70]): "Child's nature. Credulous. Passionate. They
live for the creation of genius unconsciously." Their creativity
- or so Nietzsche assumed - was due to the fact that the conquerors
who had fallen upon what was to become Greece had preserved their aggressive
energy and had thereby founded their "cultural state"
(Culturstaat) upon a "robber state" (Raubstaat).3 From
the Greek model, Nietzsche derived the basic principle of his Lebensphilosophie
(p. 114 = 5[188]): "We must desire that life retains its violent
character, that wild power and energy be called forth. The judgement
concerning the value of existence4 is the highest result of the most powerful
tension in chaos." Such a chaos of races and cultures, a chaos
put in order by a "master race", shows up in Nietzsche's
vision of the early history of Greece. It also serves as a model for the
future of Europe and its races, including the Aryans

{p. 56} and the Jews. Consequently, it is necessary and fruitful to
comment in detail upon these "Notes".

Nietzsche's notes about the "original inhabitants of Greek soil"
read as follows:5 Mongolian extraction with tree and snake cult. The
coast garnished with a Semitic strip. Here and there Thracians. The
Greeks took all these components into their blood - including all the gods
and myths (in the Odysseus legends, some Mongolian). The Doric migration
is a follow-up, for everything had already been gradually inundated earlier.
What are "purebred Greeks"? Is it not sufficient to accept
that Italians with Thracian and Semitic elements have been coupled to Greeks?

This little "racial history of Greece", as Nietzsche called
it elsewhere,6 was put together from many sources. Using gross examples,
Nietzsche wants to show that the "original inhabitants" were
very heterogeneous. There were, in any case, no "pure-bred
Greeks", but rather Mongolians, Semites and Thracians instead.
All three names were intended to shock the philhellenic admirer of quiet
dignity and white marble. The suggestion of a tree and snake cult set
the beliefs of the Hellenes on the level of "savages". Material
from ethnology and the history of religion lay ready at hand in the works
of Mannhardt, Tylor, Caspari and Lubbock. Nietzsche knew these and other
works on the origin of civilization and religion: he owned some, others
he borrowed from the University of Basel's library, as the records of books
checked out show.7 In his lectures about the "Worship of the Greeks"
(GdG), he used Carl Boetticher's "Tree cults of the Hellenes"
(1856).8 For the unusual combination "Tree and snake cult", Nietzsche
used a title by J. Fergusson.9 Even in Homer, the patriarch of Hellenic
education, Nietzsche found "some Mongolian" elements. But one
had also "found", in Nietzsche's time, that a "branch
of the Mongolian race" had inhabited Northern and Middle Europe during
the Stone Age.10 J.A. de Gobineau even claimed that the "yellow
race" had been the primitive population of Europe and that Mongolian
elements were present in Greece, too. He identified eight components
in the Greek population which, for their part, were composed of the three
primitive elements of the human race, namely the black, the yellow and
the white.11 Nietzsche's formulation that "the coast [of Greece
was] garnished with a Semitic strip" seems to echo Gobineau's statement
that Semites settled "along the coast of Greece".

{p. 57} In the revised form of these notes about the "original
inhabitants" of Greece, Nietzsche even sees "the mainland in
its interior [covered] with a race of Mongolian origin".13 Because
the Greeks themselves had made numerous observations and speculations about
the history of their own origins - about migration and autochthony - the
new racial researchers found a rich field of activity.14 There were the
Lelegians, the Karians - who were strongly mingled with the Phoenicians
- and the Pelasgians, who were also even supposed to have been a Semitic
people. A single pure race was nowhere to be found. The scholarly
debate about how many Phoenician tribes might have settled upon Greek soil15
or about how many oriental religions might have been "imported"
to Greece was still undecided in Nietzsche's time. In his lectures, Nietzsche
had also rated the Phoenician influence upon Greece very high, attributing
the alphabet, the polis, the goddess Aphrodite and various myths to them.16
Nietzsche's source was Franz K. Movers, whose work was the standard one
at that time for the history of the Phoenicians.17 Nietzsche's colleague
Heinrich Nissen went further, even speaking of a "semitising of the
Hellenes".18

Thus, in the view of Nietzsche and his colleagues, the original inhabitants
of Greece were already very "mixed". And the immigrants who
then gradually "inundated" Greece were also no "purebred
Greeks": even the conquerors had their "Thracian and Semitic
elements" - remarkably enough, the very same elements as those of
the original inhabitants. The Greeks - according to Nietzsche's hypothesis
of their racial history - did not in fact, migrate into "Greece":
their ethnic identity first originated in the land of immigration itself.19
There, they took all the garishly evoked Mongolian, Thracian and Semitic
"components into their blood" - including even the "gods
and myths". From this "coupling", the true Greeks
emerged. Only after this can one speak of a "Greek race".

{by comparison, consider the origin of the Jews, according to the Bible.
The first Jew, Abraham, was not born a Jew; he became one through entering
a contract with Yahweh, called the Jewish Covenant; part of that contract
was a ban on marrying non-Jews. Yahweh led the Jews to Palestine, and
commanded them to slaughter all the inhabitants, so that intermarriage
could not take place: guthridge.html.
Is this the "early" or "First Temple" Judaism Nietzsche
admired? Or had he not read those parts of the Bible?}

Such a hypothesis excluded, above all, any sort of "Indo-Germanic20
heritage" that might have been used to explain the specific cultural
feats of the Greeks in Greece by reference to the biological predisposition
or the cultural achievements of the Aryans alone.21 On the other hand,
Nietzsche thoroughly accepted the biological discourse of his contemporaries:
history was supposed to be explained through the "mixing of blood",
the "coupling" of heterogeneous elements, "extraction"
(in a biological sense) and, finally, "collisions" and "waves"
of "immigrants". The genesis of the Greeks in Greece, where they
"became Greeks", is the point of

{p. 58} his notes on the "original inhabitants". This point
owes a debt to a partlcular blological (see "Nietzsche's Greeks, Jews
and Europe" below) and political (see "A higher caste",
below) theory of Nietzsche's.

"A higher caste"

Nietzsche's notes jump from the prehistoric "original inhabitants"
to the historical period of Greece: from the conquerors came the rulers;
from the original inhabitants came the slaves; from the battle of races
came the battle of the "castes". Politics built itself
upon the previous "racial history". Together, all of these
components formed the Greek model that was supposed to mediate between
antiquity and the European future. Immediately following upon his racial
history of Greece, Nietzsche continued with these words:22

{quote} If one considers the enormous number of slaves on the mainland,
then Greeks were only to be found sporadically. A higher caste of the Idle,
the statesman, elc. Their hostilities held them in physical and intellectual
tension. They had to ground their superiority upon quality - that was
their spell over the masses. {endquote}

Now then, there are "Greeks". The conquerors "had
taken into their blood", consumed and digested the Semitic, Mongolian
and Thracian components.23 Something new had come into existence.
Yet the "wild energy" through which the conquerors had
taken possession of the land and its inhabitants remained preserved
up into the earlier perlod of antiquity - or so Nietzsche thought. It was,
indeed essential in order to keep the "enormous number of
slaves" suppressed. This same energy drove the Greeks both
to rivalry with each other and to the highest cultural achievements:24
"The intellectual culture of Greece [was] an aberration of the tremendous
political drive toward distinction." The highest achievements of culture
were necessary; they were not some lovely but superficial decoration. They
engendered the cohesion of the higher caste of the "idle"
- the political class and the creators of culture: in the musical and the
athletlc contests, aggression was channelled and sublimated.25 Moreover,
the supreme achievements of culture cast a spell over the "masses",
who obviously had to care for each one of those belonging to the "Idle",
whose rule, in this manner, was justified aesthetically. Consequently,
Nietzsche believed that he had proven through

{p. 59} historical methods that the wild power and energy belonging
to a conquering people has to be "bred great" (groB gezuchtet),
a cultivation process by which such achievements as those the Greeks once
produced would also be brought forth in Europe in the future.26 Neither
peace, luxury, socialism, the ideal political state, welfare, nor short-term
educational reform are preconditions for the engendering of genius - whether
of a people or of an individual; rather, genius should arise from conditions
"as malicious and ruthless" as those in nature itself:27
"Mistreat people - drive them to their limits" ("MiBhandelt
die Menschen, treibt sie zum AuBersten").

Nietzsche's considerations about race and caste as well as rule and
culture for the Greeks were aimed at his present. "The Greeks",
he thought, "believed in differences among the races". Nietzsche
approvingly recalled Schopenhauer's opinion that slaves were a different
species, and in addition, he cited the image of a winged animal in
contrast to that of an unmoving shellfish.78 In such a generalization as
this one, the statement is incorrect, and in a more narrowly defined sense,
it is racist. Neither the study of the origin of populations - their tribes,
dialects and customs (through such fields as anthropology, ethnology and
folklore) - nor the analysis and critical evaluation of differences in
language, law and religion, on the one hand, and of peoples and cultures
on the other hand, constitutes racism; however, the political use of these
findings for generating and propagating narcissistic self-images, destructive
caricatures of enemies and stereotypes that raise fear and dlsgust does
constitute racism {but the author should also note Jewish narcissism}.
Accordingly, the following statements by Nietzsche are to be characterized
as racist:29

1 "The new problem: whether or not educating[!] a part of humanity
to a higher race must come at the cost of the rest. Breeding ..."
(1881).

2 "We would as little choose 'early Christians' as Polish Jews
to associate with us: not that one would need to have even a single [i.e.,
rational] objection to them. ... Both of them simply do not smell good."

Nietzsche tested his racial teachings within the framework of classical
studies. The aphoristic formulation that he gave to his "Notes"
on the original population of Greece in September 1876 forms a connection
to the racial teachings of his critical writings.30 In his "Plowshare",
Nictzsche excluded the Doric migration and avoided

{p. 60} the word "caste" as well as such peculiarities as
the tree and snake cult, or the Mongolian elements in the Odyssey or the
Italians who had become Greeks. Purified of offensive, concrete, verifiable
details, a more refined, polished, dashing aphorism emerged, one that suggested,
in more pleasing language, the necessary connection of racial differences
to the rule of "higher beings" -- thus "the idle, the
political class, etc." are now called - and to cultural superiority.

NIETZSCHE'S GREEKS, JEWS AND EUROPE

Inheritance of acquired characteristics

Not only a political but also a biological theory stood behind Nietzsche's
notes on the racial history of Greece. His thoroughly legitimate doubts
about an autochthonous people, a pure origin or an Indo-European heritage
found support, for their part, in biological hypotheses and the application
of these to history. He writes:31

{quote} It is a completely unclear concept to talk about Greeks who
do not yet live in Greece. The typical Greek is much less the result
of a predisposition than of the adapted institutions - and also among other
things, of the adopted language. {endquote}

Once that "typical Greek" has been created, however, it
must be kept "pure", best of all through a rigid, steep hierarchy
of "castes".32 In any case, the "purity" of the
race is also a positive, basic concept of biology for Nietzsche. Nietzsche
constructed a little racial history of ancient Europe upon concepts he
had borrowed from biology.33 "Blood mixing", skull shape and
skin and hair color are the main terms of his anthropology. Nietzsche coupled
the biological to social characterlstics and to moral values: the blond-haired
is better than the black-haired, and the short-haired is worse than the
long-skulled. Some fearless etymologies suggested by the erstwhile philologist
make this chapter from the Genealogy of Morals into a prize exhibit of
philo-Aryan prose34 because for Nietzsche, the long-skulled blond -
the good, noble, pure conqueror - was the Aryan, of course: they were
the master race in Europe. Nietzsche's little racial history of ancient
Europe aimed at the present. In the social and political movements of
the Democrats, the

{p. 61} Anarchists and the Socialists of his time, he saw, namely,
the instincts of the "pre-Aryan population" breaking through
again. Nietzsche related these political programs explicitly to biology.
He feared that "the conquering and master race - that of
the Aryans - is also being defeated physiologically".35 According
to Nietzsche, the Jews had begun this slave revolt:36 they led
the slaves - the mob, the herd - to this victory over the aristocracy.
This victory meant "blood poisoning", "intoxication"
- this pastor's son and classical philologist loved to adorn himself with
medical jargon. Nietzsche identified the reason for the poisoning:37 "It
[i.e., the victory] had mingled the races promiscuously."The
pre-Aryan population was thus in league with the Jews and against the Italians,
the Greeks, the Celts, the Germans - and generally speaking, all Aryans
everywhere. The biological - even physiological - claim, the rejection
of the theories of inheritance and the demand for the purity of the ruling
castes forced Nietzsche to a biological hypothesis that presupposed the
inheritance of acquired characteristics. Nietzsche writes:38 "No reflection
is so important as that upon the inheritance of characteristics."39
The "character of the Greeks" is "acquired"; nothing
is "given" to them. In 1881, Nietzsche published a general draft
of his racial ideas under the title "The becoming-pure of a race".40
What he had previously scattered about in notes concerning classical studies
and in various other hints is here summarized in twenty-five lines of print
covering five points: 1 The races are not originally pure but, at
best, become pure in the course of history. 2 The crossing of
races simultaneously means the crossing of cultures: crossing leads
to "disharmony" in bodily form, in custom and in morality. 3
The process of purification occurs through "adapting, imbibing,
[and] excreting" foreign elements. 4 The result of purification
is a stronger and more beautiful organism. 5 The Greeks are "the
model of a race and culture that had become pure".

All historical details have now been suppressed. The blueprint of Nietzsche's
thinking, however, which he had already structured in his early classical
notes, has here become undisguisably clear. We can

{p. 62} connect every single "note" with this blueprint, as
we will shortly see in what follows. Those who were to become Greeks
imbibed the Mongolian, Semitlic and Thracian elements, excreting what could
not be assimilated. After this process, these elements were no longer
specific components of the now-existent Greek race, for it was now a new
race, stronger and more beautiful than any single, previous one. Nletzsche's
metaphorical language suggests the intake, digestion and excretion of food
occurring in an organism. This image of a "battle among the disharmonious
characteristics" within impure organisms reminds one of the "battle
of the parts within an organism", as Wllhelm Roux, the founder of
developmental mechanics,41 had described it. Nietzsche had already copied
down passages from Roux's major work in the year it had appeared - 1881.42
The significance of this text for Nietzsche has been shown by W. MullerLauter.43
The "model" for the breeding of a European ruling caste was the
Greeks:44 "it is to be hoped that a pure European race and
culture will also one day succeed [in coming into being]." In
such a race and culture - as the model prepared by Nietzsche has instructed
us - the foreign elements (those bred in) will be imbibed for digestion
or excretion.

Nietzsche's sources

Nietzsche drew his biological and medical concepts, methods and materlals
from many different sources. Some clues are provided by the authors he
himself named, others by the reading lists he jotted down in his notebooks,
still others from the University of Basel's book-loan lists of books he
and his friends checked out and the remainder, finally, by the books he
kept in his library.45 Nietzsche used physiologlcal texts as well as popularized
scientific writings but also anonymous treatises with striking titles:
Die Artstokratie des Geistes als Losung der sozialen Frage: Ein GrundriB
der naturlichen und vernunfttgen Zuchtwahl in der Menschheit (The Aristocracy
of Intellect as the Solution to the Social Question: An Outline for
the Natural and Reasonable Selective Breeding of Humanity) (Anon.,
Lelpzlg, n.d.). Nietzsche mentions Thomas Robert Malthus
and Jean Baptlste Lamarck,46 Rudolph Virchow,47 Wilhelm Roux and the founder
of Soclal Darwinism, Herbert Spencer, from whom he mav possibly have learned
the term "cull out" (German translation:

{p. 63} Ausmerze).48 Spencer had transferred theorems from biological
evolution to the historical process. He complained that a policy
of social reform hindered "natural selection". For this
reason, Nietzsche advised, one must "eliminate the continuance
and effectiveness" of bad, sick and uneducated people.49 From
Sir Francis Galton, one of the original founders of eugenics, he took
over the formula of "hereditary genius", which Galton had
used in his study of the families of criminals.50 He had already as a student
informed himself about Charles Darwin's theories by reading F. Albert Lange's
History of Materialism.51 In the scholarship upon Nietzsche, it is debated
as to whether he is to be understood as a Darwinist or an anti-Darwinist.
Werner Stegmaier, who has demonstrated the minor significanee of anti-Darwinian
passages in Nietzsehe's later writings, considers him a convinced Darwinian
"in every phase of his work".52

Nietzsehe's utteranees about acquired character, the purity of races,
the inheritance of characteristies, the degeneracy of halfbreeds53 and
the cultivation of drives over long periods of time54 could - for this
branch - suggest an unorthodox (Neo-)Lamarckianism. Still, it is unclear
whether or not Nietzsche would have recognized any difference between the
Lamarckian and the Darwinian ideas within Darwin's own writings. The following
formulation - gained with help from Wilhelm Roux's formulation of his teachings
on the inheritance of acquired characteristics and habits - is typical
of Nietzsche:55 "Thus are peoples who have grown old more explicit
about what is typical of them, and it is clearer to recognize [it then]
than in the prime of their youth."56

By Nietzsche's time, the knowledge, terminology and manner of formulating
questions that were characteristic of the fields of demographics, biology
and medicine had long entered into the various branches of the humanities,
even if to various degrees. Comparative linguistics had already recognized
the connections among the IndoEuropean languages stretching from Asia all
the way to the Celtic north-west of Europe. The overhasty connection
made between a people and a language led to the search for the original
home of the Aryans. Comparative mythology57 found the remnants of a
prehistoric religion common to all of the Aryan peoples. As early as
1868, Nietzsche became acquainted with the philosopher, all-round publicist
and anti-Semite Eugen Duhring.58 In 1875, he wrote down passages
from Duhring's work On the Value of Life (1865), adding his own, critical
remarks.59 Duhring published in a verbose, self-conscious and vulgar manner
about religious ersatz in modern

{p. 64} culture, about the supposed necessary correspondence of race
character and religion, about whether or not Jesus had been a fullblooded
Jew and about whether or not Christianity carried features of the "Jewish
race" and therefore posed the frightening danger of Judaizing the
various European peoples.60 Nietzsche made great efforts to distance
himself from his threatening proximity to this phllosophizing university
lecturer.

In historical scholarship as well - and even in classical philology
- racist teachings had penetrated.61 Within Nietzsche's racial teachings,
Jews and Aryans had a special position. In his first monograph (1872),
Nietzsche had already arrayed the "Aryan character" against
the Semitic one, Prometheus against Eve, the creative man against
the lying woman, the tragic wantonness in battle for higher culture
against lascivious sin.62 This argumentative structure is still present
in The Antichrist (1888): against the philhellenic hyperboreans and
what Nietzsche called "Aryan humanity" stood denatured Judaism
and Judaism "raised to the second power", Christianity.63
The Jews - as Nietzsche had indicated with the Eve myth - are
not creative in contrast to the Aryan peoples, they are mere "intermediaries",
merchants: "they invent nothing." Even their law is from the
Codex of Manu - copied from an "absolutely Aryan creation".64

One typical product of this kind of racial history is the "Contribution
to historical anthropology" by Theodor Poesche, in which he wished
to treat only a single race but nevertheless bind together natural and
cultural history. The unity of this field was to be established through
the concept of "race". Poesche defined this physiologically,
through the size and form of the skull and through the color of the skin
and hair, rather than linguistically, for language would be transmissible
from one group to another. On the other hand, Poesche believed in
an "original concordance of physical constitutlon and language":
"the blond peoples speak Indo-Germanic."65 Greeks and Romans,
on the one hand, and Persians and Indians, on the other hand, were
already a mixed people - completely homogeneous peoples had not existed
for thousands of years.66 His history covered human development from
the beginning up to his present day. The Aryan settling of both Americas,
of Siberia and of the Russian part of America was forming the concluding
high point of this process. The last sentence of this work praised
the Aryans as "the Master race of the earth". Nietzsche
made the breeding of a European master race somewhat more difficult.

{p. 65} Breeding a pure European race

"Imbibed and absorbed by Europe"

Nietzsche only grudgingly accepted the Aryan myth, for it competed
with his Hellenic myth. He found surprising the fact that
Christianity could have forced a Semitic religion upon the Indo-Germans.67
For this reason, he fought both Judaism and Christianity, and he created
for himself a pagan, Indo-Germanic alternative with his new, Hellenic
Dionysos and the Iranian Zarathustra. He finished this battle in autumn
of 1888 with his "A curse on Christianity".68 and his "War
to the death against Christianity".69

The Christian was "only a Jew of a 'freer' confession of faith"
- Christians and Jews were "related, racially related",70 and
Christianity was a form of Judaism raised "yet one time" higher
through negation.71 Nietzsche wrote:72

{quote} Christianity is to be understood entirely in terms of
the soil from which is grew - it is not a countermovement to the Jewish
instinct; it is the successor itself, a further step in its [i.e.,
the Jewish instinct's] frightening logic. {endquote}

Nietzsche's fight against the "denaturalization of natural values",73
his "transvaluation of all values" was directed against Jews
and Christians. Because Nietzsche argued against both, Christian antiSemitism
was especially offensive for him. The Jews, Nietzsche maintained, were
nevertheless guilty:74 They had "made humanity into something so false
that, still today, a Christian can feel antiSemitic without understanding
himself as the last stage of Judaism".

The Antichrist was Nietzsche's last word on Judaism which he
himself intended to be published. It is precisely with respect to supposed
or truly "positive" utterances on Jews and Judaism that this
fact should never be forgotten.75

A short essay (section 251) in Nietzsche's "Philosophy of the Future"
- Beyond Good and Evil (1885/6) - belongs to the "positive" parts.
Here, "the breeding of a new caste to rule over Europe"
definitely a current "European problem" according to Nietzsche
is discussed. The breeding of this caste follows the "Greek model":
the foreign elements are "imbibed" and either assimilated or
"excreted" - thus does a "pure European race and culture
come into being". With the Jews, however, Germany was going
to have difficulty, for Germany had "amply enough Jews" (so wrote

{p. 66} Nietzsche in 1885/6): "that the German stomach, the
German blood, is having difficulty (and for a long time yet will continue
to have difficulty) finishing even this quantity of 'Jews'."
Other European countries had finished with the Jews "because of a
more strenuous digestion"; in Germany, however, there were simply
too many. Nietzsche demanded what all anti-Semites demanded at that
time: "Allow no more Jews in! And, especially, close the gates
to the east (including the one between Germany and Austria!" Nietzsche
praised the Jews so much that he appeared to confirm the fears of anti-Semites
about Jews striving to rule the world. He writes:76 "That
the Jews, if they wished ... could already have the predominance - yes,
literally the dominion over Europe - is certain, it is equally certain,
however, that they are not working upon this or making plans."
Nietzsche speculated, though, that the vulgar antiSemites might provoke
the Jews into seizing "power over Europe" for themselves. For
anti-Semitism itself, Nietzsche had complete understanding; he was simply
- like "all careful and judicious people" - against the "dangerous
extravagance" of this feeling,77 "especially against the tasteless
and scandalous expression of this extravagant feeling". Nietzsche
had a measured and tasteful manner of expressing this "feeling".
And his solution to the problem was also mild: the Jews are to be
bred in. They even desire it themselves, "to be in Europe, to
be imbibed and absorbed". As for the "antiSemitic complainers",
those who might hinder this gentle final solution with their radical words,
Nietzsche wanted to have them expelled from the country. And then, he thought,
one could - "with great care" and "with selectivity"
- cross an intelligent Jewish woman with an "aristocratic officer
from the Mark" (i.e., a Prussian aristocratic officer).

In this manner, one could "breed in" some intellect to
the "already strongly molded character of the new Teutonic".
The valuable elements of Judaism, which Nietzsche was able to praise
generously in this context, would be absorbed and assimilated in
the new Europe; whatever disturbed would be "excreted". In this
manner, the new European race would be purified and a new caste ruling
over Europe cultivated. The "Greek model" that Nietzsche had
developed in his classical studies was proving its value for planning the
racial, cultural and political future of Europe. The programmatic anti-Semitism
was to be surpassed through Nietzsche's tasteful solution of the problem,
precisely that solution acceptable to an intellectual aristocracy.

{There's a problem here, because Nietzsche seems to acknowledge
that the Jews ARE the intellectual aristocracy: intelect.html;
on that basis, their interbreeding might, on the basis of Nietzsche's eugenics,
be a downgrading. At this point, I must object that intellectuals are
not "bred"; they are "reared" - by other intellectuals;
and if that cultural transmission is broken, intellectuals can even
"die out". When one considers the diet that "Jewish
Hollywood" is feeding young people, this is a real risk. I myself
am an intellectual, yet my parents and grandparents were not, and my children
are not - to my despair (worst of all, they don't understand or appreciate
me!). I submit that Jewish cultivation of intellect is cultural,
not racial. Further, even if Jews are more intellectual, to what use
do they put that intellect? Much Jewish writing in the Social Sciences
consists of apologias for their own cause; if they are dominant,
that is in part because of Jewish wealth, a millenial eschatology driving
them on, narcissism, and, I might say, deception. Having said that, I agree
on the need to foster intellect, on a humanity-wide basis. On a related
point: at my school, despite the best efforts of teachers, an anti-intellectual
culture was dominant among the students, intimidating the intellectual
children. If Jews have experienced this, on account of their own intellectual
qualities, then they deserve the sympathy of others who have experienced
it too; however, covertness and attempts to rule non-Jews impede that sympathy.
Even Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein have been on the receiving end
of "Jewish intellect".}

{p. 67} A tasteful gentle anti-Semitism

Among those belonging to the "careful and judicious" category
of the ones who could support a gentle solution were Schopenhauer and Wagner.
Nietzsche had known Schopenhauer's "theory of inheritance" ever
since his student days.78 Nietzsche wanted to sharpen the social and political
distinctions between Greeks and barbarians, lords and serfs, geniuses and
breadwinners by identifying the races to which people belonged. For this,
he cited Schopenhauer, who had been surprised that "nature had not
chosen to invent two separate species".79 On the other hand, Schopenhauer
had wanted "to solve in the gentlest way in the world" the Jewish
question - through marrying them to Christians.80 Wagner had,
at the close of his early essay "Judaism in music", challenged
the Jews to become human beings. To do this, they would have to stop
being Jews {like Marx?} and destroy themselves:

{quote} Participate without restraint in this self-destroying, bloody
battle, and we will be one and indivisible! But consider- you have only
one salvation from the curse remaining upon you, the salvation provided
for Ahasver - destruction! {endquote}

Despite this bloody language, Wagner had later rejected the vulgar,
primitive anti-Semitism that was partially even inspired by motives of
social criticism. Wagner did not support the anti-Semitic petition to the
Kaiser organized by Bernhard Forster, Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg, Ernst
Henrici and others.82 In this elevated, fine, tasteful, gentle anti-Semitism,
a thematic communality between Wagner and Nietzsche reveals itself,
one going deeper than any disagreement in other areas, whether personal,
musical or religious.

{p. 107} According to Nietzsche, the "artistes" among the
philosophers and not the moralists - are grateful to the Jews. This is
the statement that best describes his orientation to the Jews. But, as
is common knowledge, one does not find only gratitude towards the Jews
in Nietzsche's writings. The capacity "to assert oneself in spite
of the worst conditions (better, perhaps, than under favorable conditions),"
leads to aresentment against those who have a better life.
In order to live under these conditions, the disadvantaged group must be
more cunning than the nobility, for they must defend their values against
this appearance, i.e., they defend themselves "intellectually"
(geistig). Thus, the source of their power is to be found precisely in
this resistant resentment. Whereas the resentment of the "good"
nobility exhausts itself "in an immediate reaction," the Jews
must "retain" their resentful energy without being able to communicate
their self-certitude concerning their "intellectual" superiority
to outsiders. Resentment is a self-certitude that has been "internalized";
it is the consciousness of a superiority over all circumstance, a superiority
which nevertheless has a particular basis. This consciousness is unarticulable
and - because it never gains general recognition - "sublime."
Anyone who attempts to experience this particularity as an outsider inevitably
finds that he has no access to this intellectual spirit. Rather, the experience
that one has here is of the other, of an alienating way of behaving that
calls forth a counterresentment. Even Nietzsche understood that he himself
was not free of resentment: that would contradict his own concept of understanding.
The eternal return of the same can be seen as the affirmation of everything
above and beyond all time. When viewed in this light, "this most difficult
thought" has "presumptions that also must be true when the thought
itself is true."

{p. 117; Chapter 6} Yirmiyahu Yovel, The structure of an ambivalence

{p. 118} The process which had started with Socrates, Moses and Jesus,
and which Hegel saw as creating truth, civilization, spirit and
even God himself (the Absolute) was to Nietzsche a story of decadence
and degeneration. Nietzsche attributed this decadence to two main sources
- rationalistic metaphysics and Christianity: the first stemming from the
Greeks {who acquired it from India}, the second from the ancient Jews.
He therefore needed an interpretation of Judaism (and also of Socratism
as offered in the Birth of Tragedy) in order to expose and upset the decadent
culture of the present. Given these projects, Hegel had seen the merit
of ancient Judaism in its discovery - which led to Christianity - that
God was spirit and that spirit is higher than nature whereas for
Nietzsche this was the great falsification which the ancient Jewish
priests had brought about. However, as my analysis shows, Nietzsche
did not recognize a single, permanent Jewish essence. He distinguished
three different modes or phases in Judaism and expressed admiration for
two of them: for biblical Judaism, and for the Jews of the latter Diaspora.
His harsh critique pours exclusively on the middle phase, the second-temple
"priestly" Judaism (as he calls it) which had started the "slave
revolution" in morality, namely, Christianity. Nietzsche's true
target is Christianity: so much so that often he reads the ideas and
even the phrases of the New Testament directly into what he derogates under
the name of Judaism {Yet we only know of "First Temple" Judaism
via Ezra and other editors, composers of the Torah under Persian influence;
and Ezra et. al. already present the view "that God was spirit and
that spirit is higher than nature", which Nietzsdche objects to.}

{p. 119} As for modern anti-Semitism, Nietzsche repudiates it with the
same passion he reserves for the proto-Christian Jewish "priests"
- and for similar reasons. These two human types, apparently so opposed
to each other - the anti-Semite and the Jewish priest - are actually genealogical
cousins: they share the same deep-psychological pattern of ressentiment
which Nietzsche's philosophy diagnoses at the basis of human meanness and
degeneration.

{p. 124} THE ANCIENT "PRIESTLY" JUDAISM

Nietzsche's attack on ancient ("priestly") Judaism is as fierce
and uncompromising as his assault on anti-Semitism. The Jewish priests
have spread the spurious ideas of a "moral world order", sin,
guilt punishment, repentance, pity and the love of the neighbor. Thereby
they falsified all natural values. The meek and the weak are the good who
deserve salvation; all men are equal in their duties towards a transcendent
God and the values of love and mercy He demands (Nietzsche thus attributes
to the Jewish priests a direct Christian content, and often describes them
as Christian from the start.) Yet beneath his doctrine of mercy, the priest's
soul was full of malice and ressentiment, the rancor of the mentally weak
whose will-to-power turns mto hostility and revenge against the other,
which is his only way to affirm himself. Thereby the Jewish priests - pictured
as early Christians - have created the "slave morality" which
official Christianity then propagated through the world. Whereas the
anti-Semites accuse the Jews of having killed Jesus, Nietzsche accuses
them of having begotten Jesus.

{quote} The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself
becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures
that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves
with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant
affirrnation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what
is "outside," what is "different," what is "not
itself", and this No is its creative deed. {endquote} (GM I 10, pp.
472-4)

Priestly morality is the morality of the existentially impotent, in

{p. 125} whom ressentiment against the powerful and the self-assured
has become a value-creating force. The existential "slaves"
take vengeance on their "masters" on an ideal plane, in that
they succeed in imposing their own values on the masters, and even cause
them to interiorize those new values, and thereby subjugate them. Henceforth
the powerful person sees himself/herself as sinner not only in the other's
eyes but in his/her self-perception as well, which is the ultimate form
of subordination and also corruption.

Nietzsche thereby places the critique of ancient Judaism at a crucial
junction of his philosophy. It is grounded in ressentiment, a key Nietzschean
category, and is responsible for the corruption of Europe through Christianity.
However, his critique does not serve Nietzsche in fighting against contemporary
Jews, but against contemporary Christianity and the "modern Ideas"
he sees as its secular offshoots (liberalism, nationalism, socialism, etc.).
For modern Jews, after they go out of the ghetto and become secularized,
Nietzsche has far-reaching prospects, whereas the modern anti-Semite is
analyzed as the genealogical cousin of the ancient Jewish priest, whose
properties the anti-Semite has inherited, but on a lower level still, since
he lacks the value-creating power which the Jewish priests have demonstrated,
and since, in order to feel that he is somebody, he requires the fake security
of mass culture and the "togetherness" of a political movement.

Nietzsche's analysis, like Socrates' dialectic, ends in an ironic reversal.
While the anti-Semite is the ancient Jewish priests' relative, the modern
Jew is their complete opposite (or "antipode").As such
modern Jews are candidates for helping to create a new Dionysian culture
and redeem Europe from the decadence instilled by their forefathers: danielou-paglia.html.

{Where do the Jewish Bolsheviks fit in
here? They promoted equality, like the Christians, but by violent -
even genocidal - methods, like "early" Judaism: ginsberg.html.
The Bolsheviks' sexual revolution (before Stalin's changes) was nihilist,
not Dionysian. The Bolsheviks separated husbands & wives, parents &
children, into mere individuals: sex-soviet.html,
whereas Shiva is depicted as paired (married) - with Kali or some other
goddess. Given that Nietzsche could not have foreseen such a Bolshevik
regime, it is far-fetched to apply his views unchanged, as if such later
events did not happen. And what about Zionism? Can we assume that Nietzsche
would endorse the holocausts of this century, not least that of the Palestinians?
Might the devastation of World Wars I and II, and the danger that war now
poses to the planet, have changed his preference for a martial ethic? Might
it not be time to find an alternative ascetic philosophy, one where sex
is blessed? Taoism is an ascetic philosophy which does just that.}

Rhetorically, too, the anti-Semite learns that, at bottom he has the
same psychology as his worst enemies in their worst period, and this is
supposed to shock the anti-Semite into disgust - perhaps at himself. However,
by using anti-Semitic images ostensibly against themselves Nietzsche is
playing with fire.

It follows that Nietzsche holds two rather univocal positions: against
modern anti-Semitism and against ancient priestly Judaism, which are
linked by the same genealogical root, ressentiment. Nietzsche's ambivalence
derives from the combination of these two positions, which look contradictory
but are not so in effect. From a logical or systematic point of view there
is no contradiction between

{p. 126} rejecting both anti-Semitism and the moral message of ancient
Judaism, yet this combination creates a strong psychological tension which
ordinary people find hard to sustain. Hence the need to transcend ordinary
psychology and cultivate an uncommon, noble character capable of holding
on to both positions despite the tension they create. In other words, what
is needed in order to maintain the two tense positlons is not only a common
link between them (the opposition to ressentiment) but a special personality
whose mental power allows it to maintain a stance of "nevertheless"
and insist on the distinction it involves.

This is nothing new. Almost every important matter in Nietzsche calls
for an uncommon psychology. This is true, above all, of amor fati, which
draws creative power from hard truths, and affirms life despite the demise
of all "metaphysical consolations". In Nietzsche one needs anyway
to go beyond the limits of ordinary humanity and human psychology, toward
a goal which his rhetoric dramatizes under the name of Ubermench. Nietzsche's
position on Judaism and anti-Semitism is no exception.

In a word, Nietzsche's non-contradictory ambivalence requires holding
two (or more) differentiated positions that are logically compatible yet
psychologically competitive and hard to maintain together for the ordinary
person. This analysis can also help explain why Nietzsche's position
has so widely been abused; for the mental revolution which he sought did
not take place, while his ideas were generalized, vulgarized and delivered
to a public in which the old psychology prevailed.

At the same time, we noticed on several occasions that Nietzsche himself
exploits anti-Semitic feelings and images which exist in other people (or
whose traces persist in his own mind) and manipulates them in a dialectical
technique, as a rhetoric device to insult the antiSemites or hurt Christianity.
For example:

{quote} Consider to whom one bows down in Rome itself today, as if they
were the epitome of all the highest values - and not only in Rome but over
almost half the earth ... three Jews, as is known, and one Jewess (Jesus
of Nazareth, the fisherman Peter, the rug weaver Paul, and the mother of
the aforementioned Jesus named Mary). {endquote} (GM I 16, p. 489)

As I said before, Nietzsche in this and similar cases is playing a

{p. 127} dangerous game; his meaning can be twisted against his intention,
his irony misunderstood and his words may enhance that which he actually
opposes. The irony of speaking ironically to the vulgar is that the
speaker himself may end up the victim of an ironic reversal, by which his
intent is undermined and his discourse is taken at face value. Nietzsche
as a master of the art should have anticipated the ironic fate of ironizers.

THE THREE PHASES OF JUDAISM

We have also seen that Nietzsche does not attribute to Judaism a
constant essence or genealogical pattern, but distinguished three
periods or phases within it.

(1) In Biblical times (the Old Testament) Nietzsche perceives
Dionysian greatness and natural sublimity that arouses his reverence.
He does not accept the content of the biblical figures' religious belief,
but admires their attitude to life and religion because it was
vital, natural, this-worldly and was built on self-affirmation rather
than self-recrimination {narcissism perhaps?}. In the Jewish "Old
Testament," the book of divine justice, there are human beings,
things, and speeches in so grand a style that the Greek and Indian literature
have nothing to compare with it. With terror and reverence one stands before
these tremendous remnants of what man once was. (BGE 52, pp. 255-6)

{Did Nietzsche endorse the genocide at that heart of First Temple Judaism?
guthridge.html}

{quote} At the time of the kings, Israel also stood in the right, that
is, the natural relationship to all things. Its Yahweh was the expression
of a consciousness of power, of joy in oneself, of hope for oneself: through
him victory and welfare were expected; through him nature was trusted to
give what the people needed above all, rain. Yahweh is the god of Israel
and therefore the god of justice: the logic of every people that is in
power and has a good conscience. {endquote} (AC 25, p. 594)

(2) The second temple and its priests are the object of Nietzsche's
harsh and merciless attack. Here the "slave morality" revolution
was performed, the major de-naturation and reversal of values that
led to Christianity, as analyzed before.

{p. 128} To have glued this New Testament to make one book, as
the "Bible," as "the book par excellence" - that
is perhaps the greatest audacity and "sin against the spirit"
that literary Europe has on its conscience. (BGE 52, pp. 255-6)

{quote} The concept of God falsified, the concept of morality falsified:
the Jewish prlesthood did not stop there. The whole of the history of Israel
could not be used: away with it! These priests accomplished a miracle of
falsification.... With matchless scorn for every tradition, for every historical
reality, they translated the past of their own people into religious terms,
that is, they turned it into a stupid salvation mechanism of guilt before
Yahweh, and punishment. {endquote} (AC 26, p. 595)

On such utterly false soil, where everything natural, every natural
value, every reality was opposed by the most profound instincts of the
ruling class, Christianity grew up - a form of mortal enmity against
reality that has never yet been surpassed. (AC 27, p. 598)

(3) Diaspora Jews again arouse Nietzsche's admiration, because they
have demonstrated the power of affirming life in the face of suffering
and drawn force from it. Moreover, Diaspora Jews have the merit of havmg
rejected Christ and served as a constant critic and counterbalance to Christianity.

{quote} In the darkest times of the Middle Ages ... it was Jewish
free-thinkers, scholars, and physicians who clung to the banner of
enlightenment and spiritual independence in the face of the harshest
personal pressures and defended Europe against Asia. We owe it to
their exertions, not least of all, that a more natural, more rational,
and certainly unmythical explanation of the world was eventually able to
triumph again. {endquote} (HAH 475, pp. 61-2)

{quote} The Jews, however, are beyond any doubt the strongest toughest
and purest race now living in Europe; they know how to prevail even
under the worst conditions) even better than under favorable conditions),
by means of virtues that today one would like to mark as vices - thanks
above all to a resolute faith that need not be ashamed of "modern
ideas." {endquote} (BGE 251, pp. 377-8) 128

{p. 129} CONTEMPORARY JEWS AND THE CLOSING OF THE CIRCLE

As a result of their hard and long schooling and invigorating experience,
the Jews reached the modern era as the strongest and most stable people
in Europe, and could have dominated it, though they did not wish to
do so. However, once they decided to mingle with the other European
nations, then because of their greater existential power they would
naturally, without intending to, reach a dominant position, in the
sense of determining the norms and the new values in Europe. If however,
the Jews continued their seclusion, Nietzsche grimly predicted they
would "lose Europe" (that is, emigrate or be expelled) as
their ancestors had left or been driven from Egypt. Nietzsche advocates
the first alternative. The Jews must pour their gifts and power into
a new Europe that will be free of the Christian heritage: the forebears
of Christ must work today in the service of the modern anti-Christ (i.e.
Nietzsche-Dionysus), and thereby pay their debt to Europe for what their
priestly ancestors had done to it.

For this to happen, European society must open up to the Jews and
welcome them, and the Jews must end their voluntary seclusion and involve
themselves with all European matters as their own: in this way they will,
inevitably, attain excellence and end up determining new norms and values
for Europe. Nietzsche welcomes this prospect with enthusiasm, because he
sees the Jews as allies and levers in the transition to a higher human
psychology and culture. If the Nazis considered the Jews as Untermenschen,
to Nietzsche they were a possible catalyst of the Ubermensch.

Nietzsche thus assigns a major role to the Jews as Jews within his new
Europe. He opposes a nationalist (or Zionist) solution, because he wants
the Jews to mix with the other European peoples. At the same time he
also opposes the usual, passive and imitative, Jewish assimilation. His
solution is creative assimilation, in which the Jews are secularized, excel
in all European matters and serve as catalysts in a new revolution of values
- this time a curative, Dionysian revolution - that will overcome the
Christian culture and the "modern ideas" born of it (the Enlightenment,
liberalism, nationalism, socialism, etc. (and, if living to see it,
fascism as well). The Jews' role is thereby a transitory one, for it will
abolish itself when successful.

It should be noted that Nietzsche's admiration for Diaspora Jews

{p. 130} is not aimed at them as bearers of a religious culture,
but as displaying the human, existential element which he needs for his
revolution. Nietzsche, of course, is as opposed to the Jewish religious
message as he is to any other transcendent religion. The Jews' role is
certainly not to "Judaize" Europe in a religious sense. But Nietzsche
seems to believe that their existential qualities can be extracted regardless
of the content of their belief. Nietzsche would rather expect them to secularize
and practice creative assimilation in the framework of an atheistic Europe.

I must also emphasize that Nietzsche's pro-Jewish attitude does not
derive from liberalism. Just as his attack on nationalism and racism is
coming, so to speak, "from the right", so his defense of the
Jews derives from Nietzsche's own (Dionysian and anti-liberal) sources.
Also, the Jews are supposed to enhance that same Nietzschean philosophy
of life - a task which many Jews, who were and are liberals, can hardly
welcome.

Nietzsche's enthusiasm for the vocation of modern Jews is
not merely theoretical; it derives also from a classic problem confronting
any revolutionary: where is the lever within the existing system by which
to revolutionize it? Who are the forces uncontaminated by the system?
The existence, in the form of the Jews, of a human group he considers
more powerful than the others and free of Christian culture is a practical
asset which Nietzsche badly needs in order to make his revolution look
less utopian in his and in others' eyes.

In any case, my study shows that the Jewish issue was far more central
to Nietzsche's thought and project than is usually recognized. The former
corrupters of European culture and its designated redeemers, the Jews are
placed by Nietzsche at two of the critical junctures in his philosophy.
It is thus noteworthy that he always attributes some decisive historical
role to the Jews, whether negative or positive, corrupting or redeeming.
In this ironic sense he continues to regard them as a kind of "chosen
people" - or the secular, heretical Nietzschean version of this
concept!

This closes the circle of our analysis. Nietzsche as anti-antiSemite
(and the "Dionysian" admirer of modern Jews) complements Nietzsche
as critic of ancient Judaism, within the same basic conception and a single
philosophical project. Using these distinctions, we have delineated the
structure of Nietzsche's ambivalence and the relation between its ingredients.
The analysis found a fairly consistent thought behind it. Beyond the contradictions
flashes of brilliancy, dubious historical examples and arbitrary

{p. 131} statements which Nietzsche's pen often ejects, we discovered
at bottom a uniform way of thinking, applied to a central philosophical
theme.

APPENDIX: NIETZSCHE AND HIS ABUSES

Here the question must arise: why was Nietzsche abused more than other
philosophers? What was it that attracted his abusers? There seem to be
at least four reasons for this: his special mode of writing; the non-ordinary
psychology required by his position; the "rightwing" origin of
his sensibilities; and his political impotence.

(1) Nietzsche's mode of writing is one major reason. His rhetoric
is deliberately often wild and paradoxical, intended to arouse and
provoke rather than to simply argue and inform; Nietzsche is at times
ironic, at times bombastic, and both tonalities are traps for the naive
reader; for Nietzsche's irony is not easy to decipher and his fanfare produces
overstated effects which others might take at face value. Another factor
in his writing is the often deliberate use of contradiction, which
he used for several reasons, including his "experimental" way
of philosophizing which shuns final, dogmatic truths and tries to undermine
its own authoritative tone.

(2) Another reason for abuse is that Nietzsche's philosophy puts
a strain on ordinary mentalities and often breaks the usual "packaging"
of intellectual strands; it requires a person to hold on at the same
time to positions which are usually considered psychologically incompatible.
There is always some narrow path Nietzsche traces within the cruder
ordinary distinctions, a path which cannot always be defined conceptually
but requires, he says, a certain personality to locate and identify. Such
narrow paths are dangerous, however, in philosophy no less than in mountaineering;
one can easily take a deep fall and imagine one drags the author along.

(3) Several of Nietzsche's sensibilities, criticisms, etc., when taken
in isolation, may invoke the joy of recognition in a rightist reader. Because
of this partial, local affinity he finds with a Nietzschean idea or sentiment,
such a reader then sweeps the whole of Nietzsche into his own camp, no
matter how many unsurpassable obstacles he has to jump or ignore. This
is bad, intellectually corrupt, historically unjust, but very common and
all too human. Today there is also a left-wing appropriation ofNietzsche, which makes himthe father of pluralism (even
of tolerance in a "post-modern" sense), the liberator
from "hierarchic" rationalism and the "oppressive"
Enlightenment.

{p. 235} Zionism had come to assume the task of the long-awaited Messiah
and "liberate" the Jews from the Diaspora, a condition that was
interpreted not only politically but spiritually. This was in consonance
with the traditional Jewish understanding of Israel's millenial sojourn
in exile; the Zionists, however, tended to view Jewry's splritual torment
in radically secular terms, as generally pointing to the deformations of
Jewry's inner life. Nietzsche's analysis of the spiritual maladies of
bourgeois civilization appealed to many Zionists, for it offered them
insights into what they regarded as being the spiritual corruption
and desiccation attendant on two thousand years of exile, in which Israel
was denied the normal conditions of healthy, life-affirming existence
in tune with the creative forces of the people. Buber was hence one
of a veritable battalion of Nietzsche's disciples among the ranks of the
Zionists. His distinction was that among German-speaking Zionists,
he quickly took center-stage, and provided a vocabulary about which others
would organize their commitment to a Nietzschean renewal of Israel's
spiritual and creative life. In 1901 he published, in the central
organ of the World Zionist Organization, Die Welt, to which Herzl had
just appointed him to serve as editor-in-chief, a poem in which he encapsulated
his vision of a reawakening of Israel's long-slumbering life-force:

God, give the lost glow Back to my weary people, In wild, intoxicated
flames Bestow on them your happiness.

See, only a fever can save it And raging exuberance, Awaken it, and,
Father, lead the throng To Jordan's field.

The Nietzschean inflections of this pathetic cry are unmistakable,
as they are in an essay he published a month earlier, "Judische Renaissance."
This essay was to have an seminal impact on Zionist and twentieth-century
Jewish discourse in general.

{p. 250} Marx, Nietzsche and Freud were said to be the three greatest
influences on twentieth-century thought: two heretical German-speaking
Jews and a German with a complex and seductive attitude toward just those
Jews who might feel attracted to Marx or Freud. In his forthcoming
book Nietzsche's Corps/e, Geoff Waite suggests, not without some justification,
that the aim of Nietzsche's writing is to seduce leftists away from
communism, and that the Nietzsche industry has been remarkably
successful in achieving this goal with which it has been subliminally
infected {in this sense, Nietzsche has been the "prophet"
of Post-Modernism}. ... Kaufmann was a German with one Jewish parent; when
his book was first published in 1950 it helped to dispel many misconceptions.
His

Nietzsche urged the overthrown of "moralism" - which he attributed
to Zarathustra and his influence on Christianity via Second-Temple Judaism.
Zionism, however, a reversion to "First Temple Judaism", is free
of that Moralism.